Smarty is not a child who likes worksheets. In fact, she is apt to reject pretty much any printable unless she personally selected it from a bunch of Kumon books that I keep within reach. But she is always up for playing a game. Her Babushka gave her this Addition Game last year, and I keep it mostly out of rotation. Smarty spied it in my “supplies” closet and wanted to play it. I would say that her approach to addition didn’t change much since we played this game about 3 months ago. She has no problems reading the math sentence and understanding how to add
the objects on the picture. She adds them mostly correctly by counting total number, and she is always correct in identifying which player has more. An interesting point during the game happened when we both drew a nine. Hers was 7+2 and mine was 6+3. Smarty said, Oh, that’s how we make numbers in different ways! I tried to explain this concept in various ways in the last two weeks, but somehow it really clicked during this game. I tried to introduce the idea of “counting on” the objects instead of always starting from 1, but this is something that she doesn’t understand yet. At least she loves “counting games”, and this is what really matters.

Games are the best way to teach! We've played war and it's one of our favorite games. Right now, we're working on building visual sense so she doesn't have to count every single time she sees a pattern of dots. We're also working on one more and one less which I hope will build a foundation for counting on.

I want to make a button for cool math activities. Any tips on designing a button? Did you use photoshop to design yours? I would love to link up all our math activities and hope to get people to do more math at home!

Emily had some trouble with counting... she would say her numbers, but not always in the right order. I remember calling my mother because I was little concerned, since all her other friends could count, and she said, "Valerie! She is a BABY!!!!" LOL

Planet Smarty Pants Button

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